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99 Zingers – Tips That Will Challenge Your Digital Marketing Beliefs

I love using short, one-line zinger phrases to communicate key points about any given topic, and SEO is no exception. I have accumulated tons of these and decided to compile them into a single post!

To supplement my list, I posted on Google+ to crowdsource more of them; for each of those provided to me, I’ve given credit to the author. Each of these is meant to address common myths and misconceptions about SEO (and digital marketing) or to simply help you focus more clearly on one aspect of it.

The reason I find these valuable is that they can help people better understand a key point. In this attention-challenged world, a single catchphrase can create unique understanding and value when it is properly integrated into your day-to-day behavior.

I won’t promise that these cover all aspects of SEO, but many are covered — and I invite you all to add your own one-liners in the comments!

Top Down Viewpoints On SEO & Digital Marketing: Tips 1-20

These tips focus on global perspective when thinking about SEO and its place in your overall digital marketing strategy.

Discovery, Relevance, and Importance are still the three basics of SEO.

Learn what Google and Bing want you to do, and then do that exceedingly well.

Stop worrying about the details of Google’s algo — obsessing about that will only hurt you in the long run.

SEO is not a cloak-and-dagger profession, it is a basic part of your marketing plan.

Create a unique title tag for each page. If you can’t, then why does that page exist?

Create a unique page for each benefit / usage / intent that your product or service addresses.

Myth Busting: No, it does matter if you have an H1 tag. Search engines will place the most weight on the highest level heading tag you use.

Search engines associate value with domains and URLs. Don’t change them unless absolutely necessary (even to make them keyword rich)!

Site navigation first priority: What links will actually be helpful to the user on that page?

Site navigation second priority: Treat internal links as a way to distribute the external link juice your site gets. Use them to tell the search engines what content on your site is the most important.

Understand that a key part of SEO is that search engines need our help to better understand your site. This is why schema and other types of markup exist.

On-Page SEO Classic: You can do it right, or you can do it over.

Leverage your locality by using digital photos, events and interactions as proof of your local relevance and authority. (Jeremy Reivera)

Creating Great Content: Tips 34-50

Without great content, you are probably lost. People so often get confused about the role of content. Here are some zingers to help frame how you should approach it.

Produce great content, promote yourself effectively and be SEO aware. Know more about your target space than anyone else.

Share what you know, share it again (no NOT duplicate content, but the knowledge in different contexts), and then share it one more time.

Do what it takes to get your peers to acknowledge you.

Strive for extreme differentiation in the content you produce.

Don’t be afraid to mention and link to your competition. If you are creating amazing content, it should provide other resources. (Jesse Wojdolo)

Better to spend five days producing one epic piece of content than five average pieces that say nothing new or memorable. (Mark Traphagen)

Don’t rush. Take 100 steps to create and deliver the best content you can. (Martin Shervington)

Adopt an altruistic approach to your content. Content written with the intent of providing significant value to others has the potential to provide a markedly greater SEO value when shared than self serving content. (Warren Chandler)

Do not hire a random writer and ask them to write that content after spending an hour or so on web research. Just don’t.

Don’t hand writers a list of keywords and ask them to write an article using them. Give them a proposed title and then let good writers write good stuff. This will naturally give you semantically rich content of the kind that search engines love.

Article spinning = the spiral of death.

Learn to use many different types of media and platforms. Your customers are in many different places, and you need to be there too.

Give content away for free that everyone thinks you are mad for not selling. (Martin Shervington)

Link Building: Tips 51-69

You could argue that the concept of link building is outdated. I’d argue that only the way it has been traditionally viewed is outdated.

Matt Cutts on the phrase link building: “It segments you into a mindset, and people get focused on the wrong things.” (Stated in this 2012 interview.)

Matt Cutts on link building: “No, link building is not illegal.” (Stated in this 2013 interview.)

Learn how to do link building the way that Google and Bing want you to do it.

Links must be valid citations — this is where understanding link building starts, but make sure you truly understand the use of the word “citations” in this context.

Links are the result, not the goal. (AJ Kohn)

If you don’t know what links your SEO is getting for you, be prepared for your site to get penalized.

The dark corners of the web (where “no one” goes) are gone. Assume every link you get will be used to evaluate the quality of your brand.

Classic bad phrase: “Link bait”

Absorb and understand why it is that Google does not like widget and infographic links — it’s because the creators don’t care where the link goes.

Two critical concepts: “Authority” and “Editorial Integrity.” When these are combined, you have found a great place to develop a relationship.

Manage the relevance chain in all your link building efforts.

The Link Building Relevance Chain

You can’t vote for yourself.

Why does Google not like links in Press Releases? Look at the prior zinger.

Don’t look natural — be natural.

If you can argue that it’s a good link, it’s NOT. Truly good links require no justification.

Would you show that link to a potential customer right before they are about to place an order?

Myth Busting: .edu and .gov links don’t have any inherent value over other TLDs. They tend to be associated with valuable sites, but the value is in the link profile of those sites, not the TLD itself.

Directories: Don’t ever get more than 7 directory links to a site you own… I mean it, don’t do it.

Everyone has a weakest link — find your weakest link, and get rid of it. And keep repeating until your link profile is as near perfect as it can be. (Kristi Kellogg)

Content Marketing & Social Media: Tips 70-96

Content marketing is the new king. A good link building strategy is largely, or entirely, content marketing driven.

Last But Not Least: Miscellaneous: Tips 97-99

These are the few tips that did not fit easily into the above categories. Yet, they touch on incredibly important points. The world is going mobile, and it now has to be part of the foundation for any digital marketing plan. In addition, the world is getting smaller. Understanding how to bring your products and services to new countries is critical for many businesses.

Bonus Tip: Entities Whose Names Change

One issue I learned about in the process of collecting these tips is what happens when women (or men) get married and change their names. While you can tell Google that you have “other names” in your Google Plus profile, it seems that this has not yet been used by them in the search results. The result is that when you change your name, you effectively completely start your Google life over. All your prior history appears to be lost.

All of this leads to our bonus tip #100 from Christine DeGraff: “Once you have a chosen name, live with it.”

Wrap Up

Hopefully, you will find some of the above tips useful. The majority of them are about mindset and approach. With all things in life, how you go about doing them counts for a lot! Please feel free to share any “zinger” tips you have in the comments below!

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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http://www.rimmkaufman.com/ George Michie

Eric, what a fabulous collection! The power of crowd sourcing — particularly when you hang with a sharp crowd! How ’bout this one: If you think SEO is easy, you’re probably doing it badly; creating digital visibility requires quality and quality is hard.

http://www.dpom.co.uk/ Brett Dixon

One I use daily… Traffic is Vanity, Conversions Are Sanity

(Replace Traffic with Rankings depending on the conversation!)

http://www.dpom.co.uk/ Brett Dixon

Oh, and FANTASTIC article by the way!

http://www.ericward.com/lmp Eric Ward

Link Building Tip #70 Stop thinking about the potential algorithmic value of the links you pursue, and instead think about the value to the human audience they will appear in front of. Some of us have been preaching this for twenty freeking years. :)

http://www.warrenchandler.com/ Warren Chandler

Some fantastic tidbits and many really resonate with me. I love “Semantic search rewards authenticity. You really need to find your own audience and your own voice. ”

I had a great conversation with David Amerland on the subject and it’s just so true. Be authentic and selfless and the results and some truly meaningful connections will typically come to you.

http://www.cjheitz.com/ Charles Heitz

Holy Moly! Well, this will be bookmarked and chewed on for the coming weeks. Excellent collection of “tid bits” Eric!

letsdisqusit

I got 99 zingers and a paid link ain’t one :) Nice list Eric

http://journeyinseoworld.blogspot.com/ Cyrel Panelo Nicolas

I totally agree with all these tips, specifically to number 64. Thanks for the enlightenment, Eric

http://workwithmontes.com/ Joseph Montes

Great article Eric !!!

Renee Dobbs

Great information and I’m sharing it in my blogging groups. I have a question on #59 – is it not good to have clickable infographics or image maps? One of my groups is starting to use a clickable image (image map) and wondering if it is better to use regular text links.

Renee Dobbs

Great information and I’m sharing it in my blogging groups. I have a question on #59 – is it not good to have clickable infographics or image maps? One of my groups is starting to use a clickable image (image map) and wondering if it is better to use regular text links.

http://FindYourPurpose.net/ Samantha Studebaker-Carl

Thank you for this comprehensive post! This is very helpful to keep you focused on the right things!

http://londes.com/ Craig Tuttle

This is outstanding! This should be a prerequisite reading for any company looking to hire new SEOs out there! Great list! I love this one… “Everyone has a weakest link — find your weakest link, and get rid of it. And keep repeating until your link profile is as near perfect as it can be.”

http://www.seokairos.com/ Ray Hrach

Zinger #2… really? Does anyone really think that Google and Bing want something other than to sell ad space?

To be clear, I’m not criticizing them for it. Every company has to make money to survive. But Zinger #1 should definately be don’t be fooled into believing your business goals (or those of your clients) are aligned with the business goals of the search engines.

http://www.seokairos.com/ Ray Hrach

Zinger #2… really? Does anyone really think that Google and Bing want something other than to sell ad space?

To be clear, I’m not criticizing them for it. Every company has to make money to survive. But Zinger #1 should definately be don’t be fooled into believing your business goals (or those of your clients) are aligned with the business goals of the search engines.

Eric Enge

Glad you liked the list, and like your tip!

Eric Enge

Like it Brett!

Eric Enge

Amen Eric! I am with you on that one.

http://www.seo-theory.com/ Michael Martinez

So, you’re telling me that with all my years of blogging and tweeting — ruffling feathers and haranguing people about cheap “SEO” tactics — I haven’t shared 1 decent zinger.

Damn, that’s cold.

http://www.thesofaandchair.co.uk/ Tom Goodwin

The best way to trick Google into thinking you are an authority in your industry? Become an authority in your industry. As the risks associated with SEO spam increase the industry will simply mature. Bring on 2014!

webprotech

One more important point regarding content. If you can’t be a creator then be a curator.

Curation isn’t the easy way out, but a different approach for getting correlated to the niche content of your industry. Curating helps the curator create an identity, get connected to the community, reach out to an audience, gain trust, and establish online authority.

Content curation and content creation aren’t competitive, but complement each other. It wouldn’t be surprising if Google comes up with a curatorship markup to give content curators an identity the way Google has implemented the authorship markup for content creators.

Curate or create content, but get correlated to the topical content of your industry and meet the quality standards to become fit enough to survive the evolving World Wide Web.

guptaabhijit318

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